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63 lines
4.3 KiB
Plaintext
63 lines
4.3 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 667
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Title: HPR0667: Your Local Library
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0667/hpr0667.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-08 00:37:46
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Hi this is John and SC doing my second hacker public radio episode. Today I
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wanted to talk about the local library. It's a resource that I think is really
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underused by a lot of people. I should say right off the bat but I am in America
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and I realize that this might be different in other countries and even other
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states. I live in a small town and have a fairly small library but it does a
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lot and I have people talk to me all the time and they say you know I really
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should get a library card and I say well do it but they wind up not doing it and
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sort of wishing they did and I thought that might be a good subject for an
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episode. Library cards are still free at least where I am. In addition to the
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latest books and I've always been a big reader and still check out lots and lots
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and lots of books. I go to the library probably twice a week for one reason or
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another but they also have DVDs, audiobooks, magazines,
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reference material of course and my library actually has a magazine exchange program
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where you bring in magazines if you want to get rid of them and pick up magazines if you
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want to read the ones people brought in you don't check them out you don't keep them forever
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doing anything you want with them. It's just a way of exchanging old magazines that
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is really helpful. I've used it a lot in fact I read a lot of Linux magazines like Linux
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Journal and I had 30 some issues of various Linux magazines that I dumped off at the library
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one day and came back two days later and they were all gone so somebody got some use at them.
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Wireless access is available at the library 24 hours a day seven days a week.
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Just recently you've been able to download ebooks if you have a library account you can log in
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from home and download ebooks there's 15,000 of them available at my library.
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There are approximately 25 computers in the library and these are for people that don't
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have a computer or their computer is down or something like that. I have logged on to them and
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discovered that they have specialized databases that you can only access if you're sitting
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in the library on one of the computers it's not allowed to remote in and do the same thing.
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I was able to research the local newspapers and go back 15 or 20 years way back in their databases
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no charge ancestry.com is available to access their databases from the library itself only like I
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said if you're in the genealogy they have legal sites and a great deal of stuff that can be done
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right there using one of the computers in the library and even though you can't access those
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specialized databases from home there is a lot you can do from home you can log in and check out
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books, reserve books, check out books in other libraries in the area and they will be delivered to
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your library and somebody will email you and tell you when they're there. You can check the
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catalog to see what books are available when they might be back as a wide variety of things you can do
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from home. I do check out books at my local library very frequently but I have also been checking out
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the DVDs the overwhelming majority of them are no charge you just check them out just like a book
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and you can check out I believe six at a time and keep them for two or three weeks I'm not sure
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I actually watched the entire Star Trek Voyager series from the library checking out their DVDs all
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which was free now the latest DVDs movies that are semi-currents say two or three months old or
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something they do have a rental program but it's very cheap it's one dollar for four days rental
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and then 25 cents for each day you keep it after that it probably varies from library to library but
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I've got a lot of use out of that too from where I live getting to my the main portion of my city
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I have to pass the library so I stop there frequently and as I said even as a little boy I used to
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spend lots of times in whatever library I
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lived near and I've always found them extremely useful and I thought that I would
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bring this to everybody's attention just in case it's something that's slipped out of your radar
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and you might be interested in having another look
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thank you for listening to Half the Public Radio
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hpr sponsored by caro.net so head on over to c-a-r-o.nc for all of those movies
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so
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